


The Day After The Revolution

by conceptofzero



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4097821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptofzero/pseuds/conceptofzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Megatron lives again. The Decepticons are no more. No reason to stick around and let Optimus lord his victory over him. Megatron heads for the stars and leaves the reborn Cybertron behind. </p><p>--</p><p>A fix-it fic/continuation to "Transformers Prime Beast Hunters: Predacons Rising".  It also borrows/mashes up some from IDW's continuity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [The Day After The Revolution (变革之后)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4310667) by [interburstgap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interburstgap/pseuds/interburstgap)



Cybertron is beautiful. It glows and lives once more, and he thinks that if he blinks, the blue fade and the rust will return to swallow it whole. But it shines and it glitters bright as a star. 

It is alive, and he is alive, and his body is his own once more. Cybertron is not his though, and he no longer wishes to possess it. It’s beautiful, but it’s a stranger to him. There are no castes here, no fighting pit, no Kaon, only a handful of Autobots, failed Decepticons, and the mangy remains of the Predacons. Let them squabble over it. Let Optimus plant his flag and declare himself the victor of a war that no longer matters. 

Maybe he’ll return some day. For now, he commits Cybertron to memory before turning and setting his sights on the stars. There are many places out there, far from Unicron and Primus. Perhaps he’ll find a new purpose there. 

Maybe something that can wipe Optimus forever from his mind. 

He leaves as the Well of All Sparks ignites, never once looking back to see if Optimus finally looks pleased with his victory. 

\--

He finds Transformers in every corner of the galaxy. The Autobots attempt to kill him on sight. Megatron rather welcomes the attempts after a while. He has never felt so alive as in the heat of battle, and even among these poor remains of Optimus’ followers, he finds worthy battles. When they lie defeated, waiting for death, he relishes telling them that Cybertron lives, that Optimus was successful, and that the Decepticons are no more - which they could have learned if the has simply greeted him from the start instead of rushing to battle him without a word. 

Megatron delights in knowing that they will scurry back to Cybertron with their scratches and tears and let Optimus know that even though he no longer calls himself a Decepticon, he is still strong enough to defeat any Autobot who challenges him. 

The remains of the Decepticons are less enjoyable to speak with. Any delight Megatron might feel at seeing them scrape and grovel before their once-master turns to furious, shrieking demands as they try to understand why Megatron yielded to Optimus. He leaves them to scheme if they are harmless, and if they are not…

Optimus will never know what Megatron has done to keep Cybertron safe. Best that he does not, in case he assume this is some sentimental gesture directed towards him. 

There are others still, the factionless and the factions he knows nothing of. Megatron finds their ships floating in orbit around planets they never successfully cyberformed or hears them call to him over radio waves, asking if he is friendly, asking if there is news from Cybertron. He passes along the message to them: Cybertron has returned to life and it welcomes all of its children home. The war is over, the Autobots have won. Often, the factionless don’t know they’re speaking with him, as he rarely comes near enough to be seen, and he listens curiously to their celebrations and their plans to return to Cybertron immediately. 

Sometimes though, he comes across a fading distress signal on the surface of some unfriendly moon. There he finds the rusted remains of cybertronians, their sparks long faded. Megatron sometimes sits among the dead, and now and then, he thinks perhaps he should start a fire and give them a proper funeral. He never does though. Let these be a testament to the War, he thinks. Let Optimus come across them some day and see what he caused when he turned against Megatron. Let him mourn them, for Megatron can’t bring himself to.

\--

The years pass. Megatron finds many fascinating things in the galaxy, including a few quiet corners where no Transformers come. He likes being alone. It is a rare treasure, one he has never had before in his life. Kaon was always so crowded and the mines were never empty, each winding corridor and narrow shaft full of miners, and the Pit was never silent, always the sound of conversation or fighting, even in the dark. Later, when the war began, he was always surrounded by Decepticons. The base, and later the ship, never once was quiet. There was always some noise, some bot talking or the rumble of the engines, or always someone sitting nearby or guarding his door while he rested. 

There is no one here but Megatron. Even the organic lifeforms that once inhabited this place have perished, leaving nothing in their wake to bother him. Only his chronometer measures the passing of time. He is left alone with his thoughts. 

In the ruins of another civilization, he writes his memoirs. He reads them out loud when he wants to hear how they sound, and his voice rumbles, powerful and compelling as he tells of the fighting pits to a dead city. Most days, he hears nothing but the crunch of rubble beneath his feet as he wanders to another space to set up camp in, or to the energon mine to carve that night’s meal straight from the rock walls. 

He thinks of Optimus often. Megatron is alone, so he supposes he can indulge himself now and then. When night comes, he finds a dry elevated place to lie and watches the sky, seeking out Cybertron. Even from this distance, he is sure he can see it glowing still, so much more beautiful than any of the stars that surround it. Optimus must now be regretting his victory, now that he has to live with the aftermath. He remembers how even the Decepticons squabbled among themselves, how keeping peace among them and the Insecticons was troublesome, and was nearly impossible among them and the Predacons. Megatron imagines Optimus sitting on his throne, wearily hearing demand after demand. 

Megatron imagines Orion Pax sitting at his terminal, the glow of the monitor pouring over his face and shoulders. 

The silence allows him to reflect on many things he had not had the chance to enjoy until it was too late. 

\--

Even silence becomes tiresome and so Megatron takes flight once again. Over his radio, he picks up a signal from Cybertron. An unfamiliar voice announces that all are welcome back to Cybertron, but that those involved in war crimes must stand trial and accept their punishment before they are welcome back. He laughs to himself. Decepticons should stand trial, they mean. When an Autobot did the same, they were lauded as a hero. 

He does not return.

Megatron finds himself flying familiar systems. Here, he sees the scars of their many battles on the surfaces of planets and moons he passes by. There, he single-handedly wiped out one of the Wreckers lesser known rosters, leaving no survivors behind. Here, entrenched Autobots had been finally defeated when Soundwave sent in a drone to detonate their munitions. There, the last stand of Skybridge and Malcontent and the shattered remains of the moon that had once been home to a Decepticon base. 

Earth is not far away. He decides to fly by it and stop in to restock his energon reserves. And, maybe, just to see if those organic creatures are still there. It’s clear they are, when he starts being bombarded by radio waves the moment he comes within a light year of their system. Megatron, so used to the quiet, shuts off his receiver as he comes in close. 

There’s a secret stockpile left on the moon, in case the ship was ever destroyed, and he stops there first. The humans live, but they haven’t yet begun to move off-world. He’s grateful for that - humans are bad enough on their own planet and the galaxy isn’t ready to be infested by them yet.

As he refuels and restocks, he watches the Earth. This lesser place was never meant to be a great battleground. It’s only importance would be as the place that the Autobots finally fell. And yet, he had almost cyberformed it at one point, not because it was particularly desirable, but because there seemed an irony in taking away the Autobot’s pet human’s home. 

Unicron lies at the core of the planet. Megatron no longer fears waking once more under his control. He is safely ensconced by miles of rock and those deep blue oceans. And the rest of him lies in the container that once held the AllSpark. Megatron looks over earth and thinks about a shade of blue he has not seen in some time. 

When he is stocked, he turns and sets his eyes on the stars, searching for a blue and silver planet. Megatron sets his guidance system and travels towards it. Perhaps it’s time to return home, even if only to see if Optimus had held Cybertron together.


	2. Chapter 2

Cybertron is alive. He comes to a stop above the surface of the planet, taking in every last detail. Transformers have returned by the millions and the once empty planet is bustling with life. The crumbled towers are no more, having been repaired and reshaped over the years. He sees some construction here and there, but most of Cybertron has been rebuilt. The ports are busy and from this distance, he can see some sort of market or fair or festival happening in one of the public squares. 

Cybertron lives and he feels something that may almost be pride. Optimus has not failed, but has made this world thrive. Megatron feels that he could have done the same, but he allows himself a single, silent word of praise for Optimus. It would be no easy task to unite so many Transformers. And will no longer be so easy, now that Megatron has returned. 

Perhaps he’ll present his memoirs when they bring him to trial. He is no longer the leader of the Decepticons, but that doesn’t mean he won’t enjoy causing trouble. 

His presence hasn’t gone unnoticed. Megatron hears that impudent scout hailing him, demanding to know why he’s returned. He doesn’t answer, letting the black and yellow Transformer work himself into a froth. Megatron picks a spot to land, away from the spaceport, and close to the capitol steps. 

Transformers everywhere stop to watch him, arms and claws raised up to point to his shape as he flies down. Just above the steps, he transforms, his feet smashing down hard on the steps. Those near him draw back (though some step forward, amazed, and he sees scratches on their chests where once Decepticon sigils were). 

He expects Optimus to greet him, but once again the scout returns. It seems not even the restoration of his voicebox, or his part in Megatron’s death, has been enough to sate his hatred. “Megatron, this is your last warning. Surrender, or else.” 

“Surrender, to you?” He laughs then, and grins, remembering for a moment why he liked being surrounded by people. There is no better audience than one who is afraid of you. “Tell Optimus to leave his throne and meet me in person, and then, we can discuss the terms of my ‘surrender.” 

There is silence then, not just from Bumblebee and the guards, but from all around him. Megatron knows something is wrong, and his eyes sweep the crowd, searching for an answer. What he sees is sorrow, and perhaps even pity. 

“Optimus Prime is one with the AllSpark,” Bumblebee says, and it is not pity on his face as he tells Megatron, “And he has been since the day we last saw you.”

“What?” Megatron doesn’t believe the Autobot. What he’s saying is ludicrous. If Optimus were dead, Megatron would have known. He would have known halfway across the galaxy. “Enough of this foolishness. Bring Optimus out.” 

Bumblebee looks to the guards and back again, and there is no quick answer this time. “You didn’t know? I thought- … he’s gone. Optimus has been gone for years.” 

“I won’t ask you again. Where is Optimus?” And to make it clear that this joke is no longer entertaining, he raises his cannon, aiming it at the scout. The guards draw his weapons but Megatron does not back down. This is not as amusing as the scout believes it to be. 

There’s no mirth in Bumblebee’s expression as he gives Megatron the same answer a third time. “He sacrificed himself. Optimus emptied the AllSpark into his Matrix of Leadership, and sacrificed both to bring the Well of AllSparks to life. Or… didn’t you ever think about how he came up with a container that was strong enough to hold Unicron ? We didn’t just happen to have one lying around.” 

Megatron wants to laugh. He should - this story is absurd and clearly a lie, a trap if there ever was one. But he remembers the vessel standing empty the moment before Unicron was ripped from his body. It hadn’t been empty moments before. 

Megatron feels as if he is on unstable ground. Optimus Prime, dead? Dead for years? He lowers his cannon, and when he speaks, he does not like the uncertainty in his words. “Impossible. Optimus would never be so easily defeated by anyone. Bring him out. Bumblebee, send Optimus out to meet me.” 

Bumblebee looks away. Optimus never appears. 

\--

The trial is long and insufferable. He spends most of it silent, surrounded on all sides by force fields as Cybertron’s new council debates his fate. They are as useless as the old council, though he grudgingly admits that he sees no caste division here.That part of his rebellion was successful, though he feels no joy in it anymore. 

Death seems to be the choice of most. They display his battles and victories for all to see and call them war crimes. Enemy autobots stand before the council and give testimony of Megatron’s might while pleading he be put to death. Another Megatron would respond in turn, would let his voice boom out and wash over their pitiful excuses. He would challenge the council, call it the same as the last who divided Cybertron and lead to the first rebellion, then perhaps he would call for another. And who would oppose him with Optimus fallen? Bumblebee was too young, too inexperienced. Ultra Magnus had all the charisma of a paperweight. And the others were hardly worth mentioning. 

Yet, he sits and listens to them debate his crimes, and each time they turn to him for some explanation or reasoning behind a decision, he gives them nothing but silence, or the briefest of dismissals. What’s the point in speaking? He’s no longer a Decepticon. He no longer believes in his own cause. And Optimus Prime is dead. 

The last is the heaviest weight of all to carry on his shoulders. It should have been him who was there when the spark faded from Optimus. It should have been in battle, with his blade through Optimus’ chest, the smell of burnt energon in the air. Instead, he had left Cybertron, and in his wake, Optimus had sacrificed himself. He had no doubt that had any stood in his way, they could have found a solution, some way of separating Optimus’ spark from the rest. If Megatron had been there, he would have stopped that fool.

And yet he had not been there. 

Perhaps worst are the witnesses called to defend him, a veritable who’s who of failed ex-Decepticons. Megatron hates the sight of them all. His once loyal (or, in Starscream’s case, questionably loyal) minions make their cases for him. Shockwave perhaps is the most convincing, though he delivers it all in a dry, lecturing voice that does no favours. Starscream both fails to convince the council that he deserves some sort of mercy and fails to do so in a manner that isn’t entirely obnoxious and calculated to make Starscream look better. Soundwave is not present, and not for the first time, Megatron wonders what exactly happened to him. 

When they announce his sentence, Megatron stands tall, though not quite proud, and prepares himself to face a death sentence without fear. Death will hold no surprises for him, not after seeing into the nothingness of the void twice now. Which of course means he’s surprised when Bumblebee reads out the sentence and finds he will be keeping his head a while longer. 

“Megatron, for your crimes against Cybertron and Transformers across the galaxy, you are sentenced to life in prison.” The scout reads out. Though none stand in the court aside from him and the council, he hears the howls each outside the hall.

“You should have killed me now.” He tells them all. There is no sneer on his face or contempt in his voice, where it should be. 

“I wouldn’t push my luck if I were you. It would be a relief to everyone if you were dead.” The blue one says, and Megatron can hardly remember his name, only that he was the one who didn’t die when he should have. “But we can’t take the risk of Unicron infecting your dead body and doing something even worse with it than last time. Even unbreakable prisons sometimes get opened.” 

“Fools.” He says, and then no more. Megatron allows himself to be lead away. Perhaps he could escape and kill them all, or force them to kill him and end this charade. But he does neither. He’s had enough spilled energon for one lifetime, and while he cannot think of any reason to live, he isn’t ready to die a third and final time. 

Perhaps prison will change his mind on that last thought. 

\--

Prison is surprisingly comfortable. Living on the run for a few centuries has made Megatron appreciate the finer things in life. Good beds, warm cleaning fluid, steady energon, even plenty of books. Their reading lists are still restricted, nothing that could used as an instruction manual for creating weapons or explosives, but the rest is freely accessible through his datapad. 

He has a cell to himself, separate from the other Decepticons. They don’t want him leading an uprising. He has no such intentions of doing so. If Megatron wanted to leave, he could, and no amount of guards or restrictions could stop him. He doesn’t need the cannon on his arm - he fought and won countless battles without it in the Pit. 

Of course, just because he is housed separate from the Decepticons doesn’t mean he’s free of them. The third week he’s in prison, a guard comes to him at night with a visitor - Starscream. He looks like he’s been put through the grinder, big scratches all over him and one of his eyes is dulled, like the optic’s come loose and nobody’s bothered to reconnect it. The guard exchanges something with Starscream and drops the forcefield locking Megatron in. “I’ll be back in fifteen. No longer.” 

“Of course. My Lord,” Starscream says the moment the forcefield goes back up and drops to one knee. “It has been… so long.” 

Megatron sets aside his datapad and removes his eye glasses (a shameful thing to be caught wearing, but it seems the years have not been kind to his near sight and the glasses make reading at night easier). “Starscream, return to your cell. This is undignified, even for you.” 

“I- not that my Lord!” He stands, and Megatron is grateful for that much. “I came here to speak with you about our escape plan. Though, if there’s time-” 

“There will not be time, and there is no escape plan. If there was, I would already be gone. And you would not be with me.” He ignores the pitiful look Starscream directs towards him. This bot is not his second in command any longer, and the past century has made him question what he ever saw in Starscream in the first place. He had once held so much potential… “There is nothing I require from you any longer. The Decepticons are no more.” 

Starscream says nothing at first. Megatron waits for him to open his jaw and let loose a torrent of words. Starscream always has something to say. And he’s right - as soon as Starscream realizes that there is no escape plan, he starts to jabber. “Do you hear what you’re saying? The Decepticons didn’t end the day you dismissed us! In your absence, I stepped up to lead us once more… until the Autobots imprisoned me of course. But when I heard of your return to us, I spend weeks currying favours, gathering items until I finally had what I needed to buy an audience with you and-” He opens his hands, pointing to Megatron. “What happened to you? Or- wait… hmm, you have been acting oddly since Unicron left your body. Perhaps your death has left you a tad simple-minded. I’m sure-” 

Before any more insulting prattle can escape his mouth, Megatron is on his feet, one hand grabbing hold of Starscream and slamming him against the forcefield, hearing the metal crackle and sizzle against it. “My mind is sharp as ever. There is no escape plan because I have no interest in escaping. Do you think they could ever hold me if I did not want to be here? And before you think otherwise, the Decepticons answered to me, and me alone. If you want to start your own doomed movement, name it something else. We’re done. Cybertron is restored, Optimus Prime is dead.” 

He drops Starscream. Megatron watches him scramble back into a corner. He could end that miserable man’s life now, stomp him into scrap and let the guard drag his body out to be throw in a junkyard. 

But he leaves Starscream be, as he always done. Instead, Megatron returns to his bunk and settles in, picking up his datapad. He puts his glasses on and brings up the last file he was reading. “Now leave me be.” 

Starscream pulls himself to his feet. It has been quite some time since he saw his former second-in-command looking so lost. “But… what are we going to do now?” 

“There is no we.” He turns his full attention to his datapad. “You can do whatever it is you were always so desperate to accomplish. I plan on reading, now that I no longer have anyone left to interupt me.” 

With that he returns to his novel, waiting for the guard to come and take Starscream. His attempt to ignore Starscream fails once again as the bot sits on the end of Megatron’s cot, giving him another pleading look. “I don’t know what to do. They won’t follow me, and I don’t know where to lead them any longer. You gave us a purpose! Now all we do is just… wait for time to pass.” 

He sighs, regretting that once again that his misguided fondness for Starscream has left him alive to bother Megatron. “Find a new purpose then. Break out of here, write your memoirs, run for the senate, do whatever you want. Just do it in your own cell.”

When the guard finally arrives, Starscream has thankfully gone quiet, presumably thinking about what exactly he wants to do. Megatron returns to his reading and hopes that Starscream will be the last visitor for quite some time. He has no interest in being known as a popular late-night destination for his old followers. There are enough rumors about him without fueling more.

\--

Time passes. He reads a number of books. Other times, he pushes himself to his limit in his cell, keeping his body in good shape, ensuring that his joins never grow stiff. He has no desire to fight, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to if the time comes. 

Megatron keeps his mind sharp. He begins writing once again. He always liked writing, but there had been no time for it since the war. Now, he has all the time in the world. They don’t allow him to share his writings with the outside world, so he simply accumulates them, discussing the way that caste differences had been snuffed out among the Decepticons, yet new divisions had appeared to separate and divide them, or speaking at length about the planets they came across during the war. Maybe one day, he’ll have a chance to post them. For now, he simply fills his datapad with his thoughts, revising and refining each essay again and again. 

(He looked at his memoirs once, after his meeting with Starscream. They were arrogant and infuriating, and almost entirely about Optimus. He had felt so clever when writing them. Megatron purged every last word from his datapad and didn’t touch it for the better part of a week.)

Megatron rarely has visitors. Autobots visit now and then to harass him. Arcee shows up every few months to toss his cell and threaten him. He finds himself looking forward to her visits after a while. She’s the only one who treats him like the threat he is. 

Knock Out visits now and then, the vain roadster even more insufferable now that he’s changed allegiances and traded in the red paint job for a white one. He’s been assigned as Megatron’s physician and he barely tolerates Knock Out’s presence, only allowing himself to be examined because he’s read that he may be able to improve his dying night vision with laser surgery. 

“It can, but not yours.. Laser surgery can improve some optic issues. The problem’s with the connecting wires, not the lenses, and those can’t be fixed without taking you completely apart.” Knock Out shrugs his shoulders, treating this as if it’s a casual annoyance. “And unless it’s life threatening, I can’t operate on you.” 

 

“Can’t, or won’t?” He growls out. 

“Can’t, not with your bill of health.” Knock Out’s been messing with his portable diagnostic system and he finally turns the main monitor to Megatron. “Do you need me to point it out for you, or can you spot the issue on your own?” 

Megatron is hardly a medical expert (and he is growing increasingly tired of the way Knock Out speaks to him, tempted to throw away months of good behavior to put the fear back into the smug medical bot), but even he can spot the problem. The chart is a comparison of the usual make-up of energon and the make-up of Megatron’s energon. The colour is no longer the same dark purple that flowed through him and energized him during the first attempt to seize Earth and wipe out the remaining autobots, but he sees his energon is still a darker shade of blue. “Dark Energon is still present in my body.” 

“It’s more than just the energon.” Knock Out brings up another diagram, one of Megatron’s body. He moves it in closer, showing Megatron the center of his chest, and the spark chamber beneath. “Your spark’s tainted with it. We could replace your energon, but the Dark Energon would leak back into it within a few days.” 

“What does it matter?” The Dark Energon had a strange effect on corpses, true, but Megatron was alive. And if by some chance he came to an ignoble death on a surgery table, they would be prepared for his reanimation. Removing his head and spark chamber would kill him, just as it had killed the undead army he has brought back with Dark Energon. “It doesn’t bother me.” 

“Remember the last time you died, big guy? The rest of us sure do.” Knock Out’s flippant comments finally get a snarl out of Megatron and he remembers his place, quickly taking on a more appropriate tone. “What I mean is we’re trying to avoid a repeat incident. Unicron’s locked away for now, but sooner or later, he’s going to break out of that prison. Nobody wants to risk having your corpse hanging around for him to possess again, since nobody knows if he needs you intact or not and we know he can alter your body. That space drive’s a real nice piece of work, but it’s not mine, and I know nobody else was operating on you before you died. So, no major surgery of any kind, nothing that might interfere with your spark chamber. You’re already enough of a medical miracle, and we still haven’t figured out how you separated from the AllSpark.” 

“I didn’t join the AllSpark when I died.” Megatron looks at the spark chamber projected up on the screens. It looks strange and he sets his fingers over the metal keeping his spark chamber covered. It occurs to him that no one else knows how he returned from the dead. He and Unicron alone spoke to one another, and once he was freed, he left Cybertron to Optimus and his people. Megatron had recounted the tale in his memoirs, but he deleted those, and since then, he had kept it to himself.

There’s shock on Knock Out’s face, and it quickly twists into fascination. He can almost see that idiot composing a paper in his head. “Really? Hmm. That would explain why you returned as you, instead of being reborn. What kept you from joining it?” 

“The dark energon. Unicron said it bound my spark to his anti-spark. I remember nothing between the moment I died, and the moment Unicron returned me to life.” He had not thought about the consequences of that. At the time, he had been more concerned with the news of Cybertron’s revival, and then with his imprisonment within his own undead husk. Now, the true weight of those words was impossible to ignore. “I will never truly join with the AllSpark when I die. There will be nothing but oblivion.” 

Knock Out has a look on his face, a pitying look, and Megatron finds it nearly impossible to keep from lashing out and scratching up that white finish. The roadster smartly keeps that tone out of his words. “Well, the rest of you checks out as healthy, so oblivion is a ways off. I’ll request that they get you some higher grade energon, and some exercise equipment to keep you fit. I’m also going to recommend you take nanite baths every six months to clean any grime or rust out of your system before it becomes a problem.” 

Megatron sneers - as if rust would ever be something he has to concern himself with - but he does not disagree with any of Knock Out’s recommendations. He needs to think about this revelation and what it means. 

He supposes that’s another advantage to prison. He has all the time in the world to think about it.


	3. Chapter 3

Isolation is comfortable, but there is a problem: Megatron has lost touch with modern Cybertron. He sometimes hears sounds through his cell walls, far off explosions, the roar of voices, and he has no context for these. Are they fireworks or explosions? Rallies or celebrations? 

The library they provide him with has books from the golden age but nothing from the modern age. He can write and compose his thoughts, but when he reads over them, he wonders if they would seem like revelations to others, or the old, rusted rambling of a once great warlord. He always took pride in his ability to adapt and remain relevant. His compass pointed true, using Optimus as his magnetic north, but now it spins, endlessly seeking a grounding influence that is gone forever. 

Though… perhaps not forever. His reading interests change, drifting towards those books written about the Well of AllSparks. Optimus’ spark was among theirs when he entered the well. It may have been among those who escaped that day, or those who have yet to spark from the well. Perhaps he’s out there now, born again under a different name and in a different body, but with those same soft eyes. 

Another time, he would have relished the thought of meeting Optimus once more and finishing their battle truly this time - no interruptions from impudent autobots who thought they had a right to end Megatron’s life or ancient gods who should have remained dead. He could plunge his hand into Optimus’ chest and tear out his spark, crush it in his fist and watch those optics fade. Or perhaps, he would be the one to feel the life run out of him, and to know that he had taken the innocence of that bot, as he had once taken the innocence of Orion Pax.

But he could not return. His spark is bound to his body. When it snuffs, he will not return to the AllSpark. And if he is wrong, if Optimus has not returned to life, then… he may never see Optimus again. 

The thought haunts him. He writes, he works out, he eats energon and takes his nanite baths when the prescribed time arrives. And every day, he thinks about Optimus and finds himself torn between hoping he is alive, and hoping that he is still dead. 

Isolation doesn’t last forever. The world moves on outside, and though he can’t tell what the sounds are, he can see the looks the guards give him, suddenly fearful again after time without any reaction. So when he wakes in the night to the sound of explosions, he isn’t surprised. Megatron simply gathers his datapad and glasses and waits to see who it is. 

He expects his Decepticon inner circle: Starscream and Soundwave and Shockwave. Instead, the bots who gather before his cell are all young, gleaming and sharp as only the freshly forged can be. Their eyes are green, all of them burning synthetic energon. “Are you Megatron?” 

Even now, he is a fearsome fellow. Some of the modifications that Unicron made have been removed - the ridiculous battle armour that is made for show but not for precise motion - he he still towers over them all. “I am. Who are you?” 

“We are the new Decepticons, and we’ve come to rescue you.” One of them, a ridiculous looking triple changer all decked out purple begins to open his cell. “We can take the capital tonight.” 

“Join us Megatron, and we will finally Cybertron to its knees!” The leader looks to him, and Megatron laughs. What a fool. 

They’ve tried to cripple the canon on his arm, but Megatron’s done enough repairs over the years to know how to put it back together, how to make it function in the middle of a war zone when he’s pinned down with nothing to use to fix it. He’s had better tools and parts here in prison, and the leader of the ‘new’ Decepitcons has no time to even react before Megatron blows the robot in half. “There are no new Decepticons! I am the Decepticons, and I alone decide how and when to bring Cybertron to its knees!” 

They’re children, not battle hardened vetrans, and the will to fight dries up and dies as Megatron drives them back, away from his cell and down the corridor. It’s been years since he fought like this, vicious and proud, tearing bots limb from limb, burning them through and leaving their bodies to rust. It’s an easy battle but they are many and he is alone.

Or, he is, until one of the young ones grows desperate for allies and breaks open a cell, expecting the transformer inside to rise to their defense. “Stop him, before he ruins everything!” 

The all too familiar rumble of Shockwave fills the corridor at the mad scientist brings his cannon to bear and slags the hopeful bot. “Your ‘assistance’ is not welcome. Cybertron is continuing on an optimal path for survival. This rebellion will only complicate things.” 

“I had wondered where they were keeping you.” Megatron calls to Shockwave, and together they flank one another, moving past dead guards to wipe out the remains of this new and unwelcome parasite movement. “I had heard rumors of your death.” 

“I spent time among the predacons, making my own plans for Cybertron’s future. It became advantageous to turn myself in shortly after your trial happened.” He turns his cold red eye on Megatron, speaking with the merciless logic that Megatron had come to trust. Shockwave was not as loyal as Soundwave, but he always had Cybertron’s best interests in mind. 

“And what do you have planned for Cybertron’s future?” He cannot help but be curious. Megatron knows very little about the current state, other than what he’s gleamed in the past few months from those rare new documents added to the library he has access to. 

“Something glorious.” Shockwave says, and then the prison floodgates fall on them. They could destroy them easily and push on, push out of the front gates and fall upon Cybertron. But Megatron lowers his cannon and waits for them to approach. He still isn’t certain what awaits him beyond the walls and he’s not ready to walk blindly out there into a world that may no longer need him. Shockwave makes no move to escape as well, though he turns to Megatron and lowers his voice when he adds, “At your parole board meeting, your surrender will be seen as a sign you are rehabilitated.” 

Megatron laughs. He supposes Shockwave is right. Megatron has no remorse what what he has done - how can he when what he has done was the right thing to do? - but he supposes that it might not hurt to point to a history of cooperation when they decide if he will rot here behind these walls, or if they will find some new task for the true leader of the Decepticons. 

\--

The parole meetings come, in time, and despite much debate, they agree to increase Megatron’s access to things. He is now able to read current messages and information published to the network and, through a few creative workarounds, he grants himself the ability to post. Megatron does so anonymously of course, and it’s fascinating to watch others on the network respond to him, unaware of who they are criticizing. 

They also allow him to rarely leave the grounds, always accompanied by a dozen guards, and always so he can do some sort of ‘community service’. Bumblebee and his ilk enjoy watching Megatron humbled. He kills nests of ground crawlers and shifts scrap and does any of a number of mind-numbing tasks meant to assist in his ‘rehabilitation’. On rare occasion, he sees other high ranking ex-Decepticons coming and going from their own tasks. Shockwave is among them, and Starscream, but he never sees Soundwave come or go. 

They expect him to be humiliated, but they’re fools. Before he was a gladiator, he worked in the mines. There were times when he went cycles without seeing the sun, labouring away underground, his eyes adjusting to the darkness until he could see the outline shapes even in pitch black. This work is nothing like what he once suffered when he was young, the endless toil and the constant reminder that he was replaceable. In those days, he hoarded slivers of energon to eat when the overseers, slighted by some transgression, would withhold rations until they were too hungry to think straight. He slept in the dark and worked in the dark, he worked himself to the quick just so he could eat and sleep and work some more. 

The arena had been an easy choice to make - food, beds, natural light, and no deadlier than the mines were. If anything, death was quicker in the arena. There, you might have your spark torn from your chest, but you weren’t left trapped beneath ten tons of rock to slowly wind down, your voice carrying through the mines as you pleaded for someone to save you.

He sleeps well after a day of physical work, his night cycle uninterrupted by unpleasant dreams. There’s just the darkness and by now, he’s come to see it as an old friend. Food tastes better when he’s burned energon doing anything other than sitting around or working out in his cell. He feels so sharp, like he could take on the entire council with no army other than himself.

After work, he writes like a maniac. They’ve had to gift him another datapad - newer, flashier, and with larger space to store his writings. Every night, he sits on the floor near the bars of his cell and pours out fresh thoughts. For years, the only things he wrote were orders and demands for Autobots to surrender. It feels as if a tap in his mind has been turned and instead of drips and drops, his words pour from him like a waterfall. Sometimes, he finds himself on long tangents, forgetting entirely that a story started with him speaking about the early Decepticon movement, and instead he describes those old miners whose names have long since been forgotten, or the great old Gladiators from his era and before him, recounting the most brutal of their battles. 

It is during one of these tangents that he receives visitors. Arcee rarely comes to see him these days and he has long since suspected that she’s gone offworld. She still wears the same blue and she carries her Earth alt-mode with what he supposes must be a kind of defiance. Stranger though is the human beside her, dressed in one of those outfits they need to keep from freezing in the vacuum of space. Megatron doesn’t remember this one’s face but there were so many. Perhaps this is that Agent Fowler who often failed to provide them any useful information, though it doesn’t look entirely like him. This one has black and grey hair, and one of those organic face-masks that humans are so fond of wearing. There’s a name for them… ah yes, a ‘beard’. 

“Ah, Arcee, I was wondering when you would turn up again.” He makes no move to get up off the floor, or to stop typing. Megatron is in the middle of a story, recounting the time they were pinned down on Stemute’s moon and spent a cycle without any communication with other Decepticons. “I see you’re still attached to your humans.” 

“What can I say? This one grew on me.” She shrugs but there’s nothing casual about the way she holds herself. Arcee remembers how dangerous he is. It just makes him grin more, and he’s tempted to showboat some. But he’s being watched, and Shockwave gave him good counsel - his compliance is proof of his ‘rehabilitation’. So he complies, resting his datapad on a knee as he looks at the human. Arcee takes a step towards the human, protectively standing near him, as if Megatron might burst from his cell at any moment. “I can’t believe they’re letting you write.” 

“It’s therapeutic.” He echoes the words of the court ordered psychiatrist they found for him, a weedy autobot who spends most of their ‘sessions’ asking Megatron how he feels about various things. “Haven’t you heard Arcee? I’m a changed robot.” 

She laughs, and the human beside her chuckles too. Megatron once again turns his focus on him. This isn’t Agent Fowler, though he thought it might be at first. The human looks up at Megatron, and like Arcee, though the man smiles, there’s a tenseness to him that says he knows exactly what Megatron is capable of. “You’re right Arcee, he’s as funny as ever.” 

“A regular laugh riot.” She shoots back. They look fondly at each other and- oh this is rich. Megatron laughs, grinning broadly as he figures it out. Even organic life is capable of transforming, given time.

Jack looks up at Megatron, and he can’t even imagine how old this boy is now. Fifty earth years? Sixty? He stands tall still, his eyes surprisingly sharp for a human. Megatron’s laugh has died down into a chuckle as he looks the human up and down. “Has your kind finally developed workable space travel, or do you still rely on our space bridges?”

“Don’t worry about humans, we get by.” The human eyes him as well, seemingly amused by the presence of Megatron in a prison cell. Then he turns to Arcee, elbowing the side of her leg. “You guys should start charging. This is better than a zoo.” 

“I don’t know. Zoos usually have a better selection. This place just has jackals and hyenas.” Arcee jokes back. Megatron thinks he could easily frighten them both now, if he wished to. But these jokes are just those of people who would otherwise fear his presence. 

They don’t stay long anyways - the guard’s along soon to get them moving. Arcee turns her back easily on Megatron, though Jack lingers, the amusement in his eyes falling away momentarily when Arcee’s eyes aren’t on him. It’s not fear that replaces it, not entirely, but it’s something like it. The boy still remembers a time when Megatron was not behind this forcefield, and when he had no problems killing anyone who stood in his way. 

Nothing more intriguing happens as the day passes, and when night comes and the lights are shut off, he finds himself lying in his berth, thinking about Arcee and her choice in partners. It’s foolish enough to love when a loss is always guaranteed, and there is no other way for any interest in organic life to end. No matter how they maintain their systems, or how efficient they attempt to become, they will always fail before any machine will. 

The boy will die sooner rather than later, and knowing humans, sooner seems much more likely. Organic life is so fragile, so fleeting. His body will fail as he ages further, until one day it ceases to work entirely. Even then, the indignity won’t stop. The body will rot and decay in no time at all, until there’s nothing left but dust. Then Arcee will be truly alone once again, just as Megatron is alone. 

He supposes he should find some triumph in that, but it’s hard to feel much of anything about it, except the dull ache that always comes to him whenever he thinks about Optimus these days.

\--

The security grows lack, and never has that been so clear as the moment when Shockwave and Megatron are scheduled to work together. Their combined strength is needed to rip out an obsolete forge from a factory in Kaon. The rest of the afternoon is spent gutting it, pulling down the remains of what was once cutting edge technology a million years ago. The restoration of Cybertron brought it back to life, shining, stainless steel, as it was once the day it was made. But it couldn’t make it relevant, and so the rustless metal is torn down and set aside to be made into new items, maybe in the same forge that will be replacing this one. 

While they work on shifting the old forge to the doors, Shockwave briefly sets it hand on Megatron’s back. He feels something pressed into the loose plate on his back - the one that only his closest Decepticon allies know exists. He tries not to hesitate or pause, or even to look at Shockwave. Whatever he’s put there can be looked at later, once he’s back in his cell. The autobots supervising don’t even look at them. They’re too busy talking to one another. He can’t name a single one of them, and he wonders if all of these are new bots, freshly forged perhaps. 

Before they part, Shockwave speaks just the once. “Do you still write?”

“Sometimes, writing is the only thing I do.” Megatron admits. This exchange is enough to get the attention of their supervisors, who all stand to attention. Megatron meets their eyes and he knows how easy it would be to bring his cannon to bear and to smash them all to pieces. He doesn’t. He just smiles. 

Later, back at the prison, back in his cell, he stands in the spot he knows can’t be seen on camera and reaches back, fumbling with the plate on his back. He has to crane his back and shift here and there, until it finally rattles free. He’s not sure what to make of it, only that it’s very clearly Shockwave’s handiwork. He’s always been a talented one, making something out of nearly nothing. Though his body was meant to brutish, that mind of his was a thing of terrible beauty.

There’s a spot for it in the port of his datapad and he carefully slots it in, turning the datapad on. It boots up normally, and he can’t seem to figure out what it’s done at first. There are no new files on it at all, nothing to indicate that Shockwave’s sent him some message or video. The system operates the same as before, and all of his writings are there. Megatron nearly concludes that nothing has changed until he checks the settings and realizes that it has done something.

It’s turned the network connection back on. 

Megatron feels frozen as he see the signal strength. It has been so long since he held anything with a network connection. For years now, he’s been isolated from Cybertron, forced to subsist on nothing but carefully chosen pre-selected works and idle gossip passed along to him. 

This is the world with no censor standing between him and it. He returns to the front and carefully tabs open a browser. It explodes in colour and light, in headlines and photos, and he recognizes absolutely none of it. 

A photo of Bumblebee standing in front of the Hall of Records, beside him a strange bot wearing a ceremonial sash. A headline: SAWTOOTH EVADES CAPTURE; BODY COUNT EXCEEDS 50. An ad of a triple changer advertising an advanced T-Cog to allow for smooth transition between alt modes. A video that he watches with the sound off that shows a battle deep in space between bots and an organic ship. CYBERTRONIANS BATTLE FOR CONTROL OF THE VOCH RELAY. 

He spends the better part of the night reading everything he can. The lights go out and he lies on his berth, his datapad’s light turned down. It’s bad for his eyes but he doesn’t want the camera to notice the way the light flickers across his face as he makes his way through articles and videos. Cybertron’s changed so much. Here, he finds out about the civil war between Cybertron and the so-called ‘New Deceipticon’s’ that ended the night they stormed the prison and attempted to recruit Megatron to his side. He reads about Bumblebee’s surprisingly competent attempt at leading Cybertron, and the line of successors drawn from the ranks of of the unaligned (NAILs, it says, though some articles clearly find the term distasteful, as well as renounced Decepticons and Autobots). There’s still strife, still crime, but piece by piece, he sees the future he fought for laid out in front of him. Megatron had always believed that he would be the one to lead it, but what he finds it that he’s received his results in the end. 

Finally, with dawn coming, he looks for signs of Optimus. There are so many articles about him. Cybertron still mourns for Optimus, and he finds photos after photo of statue after statue, monuments erected to celebrate the Autobot leader. There’s video and he watches it, hands gripping the data pad tight as Optimus shouts silently to Autobot troops, as he stands beside Megatron (and they were so young, they were so young), as he stands on the edge of the Well of AllSparks. FOOTAGE TAKEN FROM RATCHET’S INTERNAL CAMERA, the attribution says. In the camera, Optimus takes off, rocketing high in the air before he falls. Megatron looks to see if those eyes were open when he fell. He can’t tell. He falls, and all is quiet until the Well erupts with sparks. 

So passes Optimus Prime. 

He turns off his datapad. There are a few hours left according to his chronometer. Megatron lies in the dark, but it’s not really dark. It’s never really dark here. He remember walking through the mine, a hand on the right walk as he walked. The hand kept him from getting lost, from stumbling forward into a pit and falling to his death. Megatron’s eyes are terrible, but he can look up at the ceiling and still see the corners of it, the dim light of the jail creeping into every part of it. 

There’s no darkness here around him, only darkness inside of him, a purple poison that keeps his spark trapped within his body. He will never join the AllSpark. He will never be reborn. Megatron will never see Optimus again - never see Orion Pax and his kind, curious face. 

Dawn comes. The light does nothing to diminish the darkness inside of him.

\-- 

Time passes. No one finds the device in his datapad. No one realizes he has access to the outside world. Megatron speaks very little to keep from revealing anything he’s learned. He doesn’t feel much like talking anyway. 

During the day, he does what he’s allowed to. He works when it’s time to work, and he lies on his bunk otherwise. He exercises a little, to keep from rusting, and he eats what they give him, and mostly he just waits for night. 

The psychiatrist, Rung, asks Megatron all kinds of things. He answers when he has to and lets silence answer the rest. Rung’s not a stupid bot and his questions get more pointed as time comes on, shuffling Megatron towards a corner. What’s happened to make him so quiet? What’s changed that’s made Megatron be so compliant? He gives Rung nothing to work with. 

The truth is that he’s mourning. Megatron is not a fool. He knows exactly what this is. He never saw Optimus fall and truth be told, he never believed it entirely. When they put him on trial, he was numb and when they locked him away, it was more of a vacation than a punishment. Now he’s seen the video and he knows with all certainty that it was true and real. He was never meant to see it. 

They should have shown it to him from the start. He might have gone mad with grief then, and wouldn’t have that been interesting? Wouldn’t have that been something? It’s too late though. So during the day, he grieves and he sleeps and he reads a little, but mostly he waits for night. 

At night, he writes. 

He thinks Optimus would be glad to see Megatron writing again, though he would likely feel reluctant about seeing him post so much. The last time he published his writings and poems, he started a war - The War - and smashed their world. 

There’s no worry of that this time. Megatron posts his pieces under a false name and notes that they get very little attention, most of the time. He’s just one voice in a sea of noise, and his musings are not to current tastes. His thoughts are out of date according to those who do reply, and the most lively conversations are between those older pre-War models that talk among themselves, remembering the way the world used to be. 

Megatron’s poetry sees a little more footing, but only a little. Most ignore it. Those who read it do tend to respond, and more than one stranger has sent a message straight to his account. They talk about it and predictably, they talk about the War. It’s what everything comes back to. It’s what everyone returns to in the end. The War, the one thing they all have in common. Even those born after it aren’t free of it - they’re just affected differently.

But it’s the things he writes about Optimus that get the most attention. He has to be careful not to speak too much from experience, to reveal details known only to him and Optimus and one or two others, so he always takes the position of an archivist, going through oral histories. Optimus would find that amusing, he thinks, or perhaps he would be irritated by it. He talks about the early days, before the Decepticons and Autobots were two separate movements, before the ugly fight in front of the Senate that revealed the fatal split in their unity. So many of them only know Optimus as he was during the War, as the long-suffering, endlessly brave hero.

He tells them about Orion, who questioned so much, who worried about the consequences of those answers. Orion, who wrote Megatron and came to see him fight and who didn’t look away when he saw the bodies pulled from the pits and melted to slag. Orion, who had everything to lose by siding with Megatron and who did so all the same, knowing he would be stripped of his position and that his works would be discredited. The thing about Orion was that he never asked for recognition or sympathy for that. He understood that his position depending on others being worked to death in the dark, fighting for scraps of energon, fighting to death for the amusement of those who had the luck to have alt-modes and purposes deemed worthy of status. Even when they turned on one another… even when he turned his back on Orion. 

At night, he almost feels alive and he knows it’s because he’s reliving things long past. Orion is gone but in the dark, he can bring him to life one word at a time. 

Some request he write about other famous figures. Some even unknowingly ask him to write about himself. Amusing as the suggestion may be, he ignores those requests. He’s spoken enough about himself for one lifetime. What else would he even say? 

He thinks now and then of the biography he wrote when wandering, in that strange time between his disbanding of the Decepticons and his return to Cybertron. His last read through of it had been humiliating, a reminder that he had always been more obsessed with Optimus than he would like to admit. Nothing’s changed, though this time when he talks about Optimus, Megatron does not include himself in those sentences 

Megatron may not speak about himself, but others do. He’s in the news and as he lies in his berth at night, he reads about the debate about what to do with him. Reformed is a word that appears a lot. War criminal is another. No one seems to be certain what to do with him. The only consensus is that they can’t execute him, but for every article that calls that he be locked away forever in some deeper, darker prison, there is another calling that he be released (with conditions, of course). 

Megatron is often tempted to comment on these and give a stirring argument for why he should be released. He doesn’t, and not just because he knows getting caught would destroy any chance of that. The truth of the matter is that he’s not sure if he wants to be released. Prison is comfortable. Prison is peaceful. No one expects him to command or give orders, and nor do they expect him to entertain a parade of visitors. Now and then, people visit, but most of his days are spent without him exchanging words with anyone. He writes at night, words flowing through him at rates he only barely remembers from those early days. 

What would happen to him if he left this place? There would be so many visitors, and people watching his every move, and questions. So many questions. Rung’s are easy to shut down but others won’t settle for silence. And unlike the psychiatrist, Megatron knows they won’t be attempting to help him in their own, fumbling way. They’ll simply want him to confirm what they already believe about him. 

By the dim light of his datapad, he watches Orion fall into the Well again and again. Somewhere, at this same time, Megatron floats above Cybertron, giving his home one last look before he leaves. He remembers the glow of the well igniting. Even then, it was too late to stop Optimus. 

He holds the pad against his chest and stares up at the ceiling. In the morning, when they take him to Rung, he will answer his questions. Just this once, he’ll speak about Optimus. Perhaps once he’s done so, he can be free of this feeling, and he can write once more about someone other than Orion.


	4. Chapter 4

His release from prison is done quietly. There’s too many worries that any announcement will see violence from one side or another. Officially, there are no longer any Decepticons and Autobots, but Megatron is quite aware that in practice, they exist and they are very loud in the comment sections. So in the middle of the night, he his quietly moved from his cell with his meager possessions in a crate, and is promptly transported to Kaon. The atmosphere is tense and he catches snippets of conversation here and there. It seems no one could decide if he should go to Kaon, Iacon, or be transported off-world, and in the end, it was decided to send him back where he had originally come from. 

He’s not free of course. There will be psychiatrist appointments, now to be held at wherever he will be living. There will be guards living on either side of his apartment. He’s not to go out without an escort, and he’s not to go outside at all until three weeks after the announcement that he’s been released. He’s barred from talking about himself or the Decepticon movement. They attempted to bar him from speaking to ex-Decepticons and visiting Decepticon locations, but he’d laughed then and said, “You should have moved me off-planet if you expected to enforce that.” 

The operation is surprisingly competent. Within the space of a few hours, Megatron has traded his cell for another, though this one is larger and better furnished. He’s given restricted access to the network and another stack of rules he’s expected to obey, and then they finally leave. 

And once again, he’s alone. 

Megatron sorts through the crate of things, taking his datapad. Shockwave’s little device still works, and when he checks, he finds there are no restrictions on the sites he can and can’t visit, so long as it’s active. When he turns it off, he discovers that most of the network is locked down and his choices include the government's site, a handful of pages aimed at rehabilitating Decepticons and an archive of selected works of poetry. Megatron’s are not included. He turns Shockwave’s device back on and contents himself with this private freedom. 

There’s a window and he draws a chair up in front of it, sitting by it and looking outside. Kaon’s so different from what he remembers. When was the last time he was here? He can hardly remember. It must have been shortly before Cybertron was destroyed. Though in those last days, he often found himself off-planet, advising troops from any of an assorted number of seized battlecruisers. It had become dangerous for him to lead the troops directly into battle. And there had been so much work to do. 

He turns the sound up on his datapad and plays some of Optimus’ speeches. As he goes down the years, he can hear his voice change, growing weary long before his time. The autobots he calls by name begin to slowly disappear from his speeches, or appear only in lists that remember the dead. Megatron’s sure he killed some of those listed with his hands. He doesn’t remember every death and every battle. The energon that’s covered his hands could flood the streets. 

Megatron doesn’t feel guilty for what he’s done. He doubts he ever will. Maybe his way wasn’t the best way, and maybe he was wrong to turn his back on Orion after they spoke in front of the Senate, but nothing he said was any less true just because his methods were brutal. 

This apartment is another cage. The view looks over a Kaon he doesn’t recognize. Where are the fighting pits now? Buried and forgotten? Cybertronians fought and bleed and died there, and what have they done with the pits now? Covered them over, tried to forget that they exist. They went down into the hearts of Cybertron, their tops open to the skies, the roar inescapable. Where are the mine entrances now? Have they covered them and tried to forget about those buried down in the dark, crushed by the shifting metal mass? 

Megatron stops one of Optimus’ speeches. He logs onto the network and starts a new post. It asks for his name and he changes it, typing in his proper name - MEGATRONUS. 

“The first time I killed, it was in the fighting pits.” He types in the dark. The letters light up and he writes quick and fast, knowing that when he publishes this, they’ll come for him, demanding to know why he broke the agreement, demanding to know how he bypassed their security. But by the time they do, he’ll be gone. If they want to find him, they can come to the fighting pits and find him there, down in the dark, down where he belongs. 

He grins as he types and feels that spark burning deep inside him. It’s the most alive he’s felt in years. 

\--

Megatron was right - they buried the fighting pits, welded over the entrances and burying the pits under new buildings that sell cheap energon and offer chasse repairs at a distrustfully deep discount. He tears open the stairwell, hidden in the alleyway between an interface parlor and a bodywork shop and lets himself inside, heading down into the dark. The old seating is all still here, ring after ring, descending down from the cheap seats to the expensive boxes. He could have never afforded to sit in those, though once he was too well known to ignore, they had granted him a seat for a friend. Orion used it, on rare occasion. He hated the bloodsport, but he always made himself watch. 

He had liked that about Orion. The archivist had never looked away, no matter how much he objected to what he saw.

Below the boxes is the pit floor, and below that is where he spent a great deal of his life. It’s dark down here too, nearly as dark as it gets with the Pit top covered, but he manages to find a few lights that still work, even after a millenia. There’s a thick layer of dust here and the smell of ancient energon. 

The emergency lights cast a cold light over everything, including the corpses he finds huddled together in a back room. They wear Autobot symbols and the backs of their heads are blown open, execution style. He can’t remember them. Megatron imagines that he gave the order for them to be killed, but try as he might, he can’t remember a thing about them. He’s seen so many die by his hands and by his orders over the years, but he always tried to remember them. Megatron felt it was important to know the enemy, to know exactly why they deserved this.

He can’t even begin to remember why they deserved an execution. In the end, he marks down all the information he can gather from them and then takes them down to the smelter, letting them pass along the same path so many fallen gladiators did. 

The floor of the pit is as stained as ever, the bright blue of spilled energon having long since dried and flaked away, leaving the metal discoloured. He sits in the middle of it with a lamp and his datapad, checking his post. It’s blown up, predictably so, and has already outstripped his most popular posts about Orion. He wonders what Orion would think to know that Megatron remains as polarizing as ever to the masses. The comments have turned to chaos and he watches as they rage against one another, much to his displeasure.

The inbox associated with his account is filled with messages. He deletes most without reading them. A few that come from familiar names are read, and fewer still get answers. Most want to know where he is, and he avoids those answers. 

Megatron makes another post about his time in the fighting pits. The stories come back easily as he sits in the fighting circle. He can almost hear the roar of the crowds again. On a bad day, it had been like the cry of some great, tortured beast, screaming out as it suffers. He tries to convey this through stories, but after a few poor beginnings, he writes a poem. 

_Kaon in those days was but a cage_  
Poorest toiled and dwelled within  
Bodies tired and joints worn thin  
Whilst ev’ry spark filled flush with rage 

_Down in the pits did energon spill_  
Wasting away both life and health  
Fair Iacon grew flush with wealth  
And had all and wanted more still 

_Rebel rousers turned to slag_  
Riots kept at bay by dreaded pits  
Where bots survived with brute and wits  
Or were done in by the smallest lag 

It spools out of him easily, though he does go back and revise again and again until he feels the words begin to tremble in their stanzas. He posts it and watches as the view count climbs. It surpasses all of his other poems, but only because now his name is attached. 

The pits feel eerie with only him inside of them. They were always so full of life, even once the crowds had retreated to their burrows and shacks. Even during the worst of the war, there had always been Decepticons here, right until Cybertron’s untimely death. It feels haunted now to be so quiet, so empty. 

Nearly empty. He becomes aware of the footsteps of someone coming down the stairwell. He snuffs the lap and gets to his feet, bringing his canon up. It’s early for someone to have found him, but not impossible. So who will it be; Autobot, Decepticon, or NAIL? 

The question answers itself when he hears the bot stumble, and the sound of an angry old voice calls down to him. “Turn your light back on, before I snap my neck.” 

Ratchet. No threat there. Even when fueled by the false energon, he had barely made a dent. Megatron turns the lamp on and carries it over to the stairwell, holding it high. “What are you doing here?” 

“Looking for you. You’ve got the whole planet in an uproar, as planned I expect.” He grumbles as he keeps coming down the stairs, looking distrustfully at the place. “You can’t ever just let anything be.” 

“Why should I? Letting things be is how the Functionalists took power.” Megatron considers throwing a barb at Ratchet, a reminder that bots like him always had a place among those people. He resists the urge, if only out of respect for Optimus. He and the Autobots had no more use for the Functionalists than he did. Instead, he waits for the old bot to join him before he heads back into the pit proper. “I don’t believe you’ve ever been here before. It’s not what it once was.” 

“They should have burnt it to the ground.” He says, looking around and up. The view isn’t the same without the open sky above to taunt all those below at the base of the pit. Ratchet looks at the stains on the floor, his optics burning bright in the half-dark. His eyes turn to the box seats surrounded the floor, eyes firmly on them when he speaks again. “This was barbaric. Pitting bot against bot for entertainment.” 

“And yet it was the only thing that kept Kaon from boiling over for centuries. They knew how to distract the hungry and weary. And I knew how to captivate an audience.” What an audience it had been too. Those elites had been happy to watch him eviscerate his opponents. By the time they bothered to listen to what Megatron said once the fights were over, he was too powerful to silence, too well loved by the people of Kaon to be able to make him disappear in the dead of night. The fights had grown harder, more vicious, but he had trumphed again and again. 

They’re both silent a moment, staring up at the darkened tiers far above their heads, the wire cage that kept an audience in, bowed over time by the force of hands and bodies pushing against it. 

Megatron breaks it, eyes still on the dark circle above where once the sky loomed. “I’ll ask you again. What are you doing here?” 

“I already told you. I came looking for you. I figured you would be down here, and sooner or later, some other bot’s going to figure that out too. I wanted a chance to talk to you before this all explodes again and ruins my attempt at a peaceful retirement. I already brought this world to life once. I don’t have the energy for life in exile again.” He moves slower than Megatron remembers, an old man feeling his age. These days, Megatron is feeling his as well, though he won’t admit that to anyone living. “I saw your postings.” 

“Everyone has seen them by now.” Megatron signed his name to them on purpose after all. 

“Not those ones.” He promptly interrupts Megatron, and he’s remembering why he could never stand the medic, before he’s surprised by his words. “The ones you were posting about Optimus. You’ve been putting them out for months now, along with some weak poetry.” 

Megatron disregards Ratchet’s attempts to needle him. The poetry is fine and he has no interest in the criticisms of a medic who probably enjoys those dreadful models of pre-War Cybertron, where every bot knows their place and stays in it. What’s more pressing is how he knew the other writings were his. It’s not as if it’s impossible to place his writing, but Megatron expected that someone would have said as much if he was too obvious. “What gave me away?” 

Ratchet doesn’t answer right away. He poses a question to Megatron instead. “Are you really this eager to start another war?” 

He is tempted to shoot back at him with some easy answer - he is only ever eager to ensure justice - but he stays his tongue for a moment. Ratchet came here alone instead of directing the authorities to him. And if anyone else alive truly understands the cost of the war, it’s Ratchet. 

“No. I’ve lost my taste for it,” he admits, heading away from the stained ring and back to the stairs, gesturing for Ratchet to follow him, “but I won’t stand for letting people forget why we fought. They’ve told everyone it was a fight between Autobots and Decepticons, and they’ve paved over the arena, so no one has to remember how many of us lived and died here for the amusement of the Functionalists. I want the truth to be preserved, no matter how ugly it may be.” 

Ratchet follows Megatron down to the under-pit, his eyes glancing over the crude medical equipment they made do with down there. “That’s what Optimus would have wanted too. That’s why I knew those articles were by you. You told the story Optimus would have wanted them to learn.” 

Megatron still has no respect for Ratchet, but he can see what Optimus saw in him. And to a degree, he can understand why Ratchet came here to speak to Megatron directly. It’s what Optimus would have wanted - understanding rather than war. 

“I don’t regret anything I’ve ever done.” He needles Ratchet with that knowledge, since he won’t allow this to progress any further with Ratchet under some delusion that Megatron has reformed. “I did it all for the good of our people.” 

“You might believe the last part, but I know you regret something. And I know it’s the same thing I regret.” He stops and seats himself on a chair, his face in mild pain as he bends his knees to sit down. Ratchet lets his face smooth out when he’s seated, regarding Megatron cooly. “We shouldn’t have let him kill himself.” 

Megatron has nothing to say to that. He’s not certain he ever will. “Call them. Tell them where I am.” He tells Ratchet instead. 

“And what good would that do? They lock you up again and it starts a war. I told you, I agree with you - Optimus would have wanted the truth, no matter how ugly. And that’s what we’re going to give them.” He waves his hand to a stool across from him, motioning for Megatron to sit and speak with him. “These kids don’t understand and they need to, if we’re ever going to leave the war behind us. I don’t know how to do that exactly but I’m a good sounding board. You’ve got ideas, but you need somebody to reel you in when you’re getting out of control. So, grab a seat, and let’s figure this out. Let’s make something Optimus would have liked.” 

Megatron wants to run. He’s never felt the impulse so strong, not since the last time he ran away from Cybertron, haunted by the memories of having his body seized and used by Unicron. Megatron wants to run away from this, to head back out to the stars.

But Optimus wouldn’t want that. It was Ratchet who took the footage of Optimus falling into the Well of Allsparks. He saw the way Optimus closed his eyes as he fell, the way he looked happy as he died. 

Megatron takes a seat. He says the thing he’s been holding close for some time, something he couldn’t even bring himself to tell the psychiatrist. “He might still live. His spark might have been with those that erupted from the well.” 

Ratchet’s face softens with grief. “I know. I’ve been looking for him.” 

He wonders what Optimus would think of this. Maybe he’d be glad to see them working together. Or maybe he would just be disappointed that here they were, cycles later, still pining for him. 

Megatron clears his voice box with a short burst of static, making sure it’s clear and strong when he starts talking to Ratchet. It seems stupid to do this, but Optimus would have liked it. Maybe that will be enough.


	5. Chapter 5

It takes cycles to get them to officially reopen the Pit. The senate drags their feet and debates on the dangers of allowing it. Some say it will cause another rebellion, others argue that anything that the Decepticons find sacred should be destroyed. Much to Megatron’s eternal annoyance and mild amusement, a recently released Starscream tries his hand at being a politician and actually does rather well at it. Megatron shouldn’t be too surprised by it - he was always masterful at backstabbing and avoiding the consequences of it. 

Despite the Senate’s endless discussions, Megatron goes ahead and does what he wishes anyway. They clear off the pit, opening it up to the sky again, and they leave the old energon stains on the metal, so none will ever forget what this place was. The boxes are gutted and hollowed so each are the same, no matter how high one rises up, and he walks the steel floor once more with opponents, but no one draws energon these days. They debate instead, raising arguments to the crowds and listening to the roars and jeers. 

Megatron is as well spoken as ever, his hoarse voice still able to thunder up to the highest rafter. He tells them of the times before, of the Functionalists rule and the bots forced to fight to the death or risk starving, of the bots who had their heads and hands taken for the crime of daring to practice what they loved instead of only what they were meant to. 

His politics are called old, out of date, ridiculous and any of a dozen other words. He relishes their attempts to render him out of date because of his age, for it gives him plenty of opportunity to destroy them, turning their words back on them to reveal any biases. Megatron is still the champion of the Pits, even though he never throws a punch these days. 

In time, he’s joined by Shockwave. The mad scientist rarely takes the floor, except to sometimes debate Megatron. The Pit packs when they do, bots of every size and shape listening as they work themselves ragged, Megatron barely keeping upright as Shockwave comes at him with cold, hard logic. There’s rarely an obvious winner, but that’s fine - the point of debate isn’t always to win (though Megatron prefers it when he does). 

By the time the Senate votes to open the Pits officially, they’ve been going for cycles. Megatron only bothers to acknowledge this because it gives him a chance to invite Starscream down to the floor and to put him to work. He’s as weaselly as ever, a fast talker who quickly darts away from any points that might undercut him, and who prefers to lead the audience to a conclusion rather than just presenting his ideas. Starscream’s brought another flyer with him, a large jet who claps long and loud whenever Starscream scores a point. Starscream’s wings flutter with delight at his attention, his voice growing shriller and bolder as he speaks to the crowd about his vision of Cybertron’s future. When he’s done pontificating, Megatron pats him on the back, “Infuriating as ever.”

Starscream takes it as a compliment, preening openly, “And as effective as the first day I served under you. One more thing, my- ah, Megatron. Since I’ll be publishing it next week, I thought I’d give you a copy first.” 

He offers a datapad to Megatron. When he glances at what’s on screen, he caught help but laugh long and hard. Starscream is less than pleased by this, but what did he expect? He actually followed Megatron’s advice and wrote his memoirs out. Megatron can’t stop laughing, especially not once he starts reading them. 

Still, even as he laughs, he puts two hands on Starscream’s shoulders and looks at him with a sort of irritated pride. And how can’t he? This unfaithful, backstabbing, power-hungry idiot has finally managed to do good at something, and he’s doing very good at it. “You have always been good at making people miserable,” he finally tells him, giving Starscream a squeeze, “soon, you’ll introduce all of Cybertron to that particular gift of yours.” 

Starscream’s companion - Skyfire - laughs at that and leads Starscream away as he tries to figure out if he’s insulted or pleased. And as soon as Megatron is left alone for a moment, there are bots on either side of him, seeking his counsel or opinion or attention. 

He’s never alone these days. There are so many young bots, forge and born after the war, their sparks shining bright in their chests. He always makes time for them, but as he looks into their eyes and hears them speak, he feels his excitement dull somewhat as he realizes they’re not who he’s looking for. Still, he’s not ungrateful nor is he stupid, so he does it best to answer them, to mentor who he feels he should and to direct the others to ones who will do well by them. He wants them to feel able and welcome to approach him, in case one day he finds Orion Pax standing in front of him once more. 

They’re so eager for his attention. Some more eager than others, trying hard to be his Starscream or just to fill his berth for a while. He’s careful to turn most away, preferring to recharge alone these days. There’s too much at stake to throw away everything on some young, pretty bot without the experience to know what they’re getting into. 

Instead, he spends his nights with Ratchet more often than not. They’re not friends and that’s what he likes about it. Whatever he says, he knows he’ll hear the truth from Ratchet, no matter how inconvenient or irritating. And he knows he doesn’t need to worry about his words, not when everything he says is equally damned in the old Autobot’s eyes. Ratchet prefers the truth, and Megatron enjoys speaking it. 

They’ve spent too much of their lives in spaceships and away from Cybertron, so though Ratchet is old (and though Megatron has also begun to feel his joints moving slower as well, only slightly but still slowing), they still journey up from the Pit every evening and find a place on the rooftops to sit and look over Cybertron. 

“He should have seen this,” Ratchet says more than once, looking down on the streets. Bots are everywhere, driving in alt-modes or walking along the streets, talking and laughing and sometimes brawling. 

Megatron rarely answers Ratchet. He doesn’t need to. Optimus should have been here to see this. Maybe one day, he will be. Megatron won’t stop looking, so long as hope lives. 

\--

Starscream is elected the day after Ratchet joins with the Allspark. It’s probably for the best. Ratchet hated Starscream and thought his campaign to lead the Senate was a sign of the times.

His funeral is not as large as it should be considering all the work he did in is life, but it’s large enough to be fitting. The Pit is full from top to bottom with mourners, most too young to remember him as anything other than the grumpy old medic who would walk onto the Pit floor and talk briefly on subjects now and then, never debating, only ever telling. Megatron gives him a memorial speech worthy of the ages before they give him a gladiator’s burial, seeing melted into slag. 

Starscream makes an appearance of course, shaking hands and pledging to erect a statue to Ratchet’s memory. Megatron makes a promise to himself to hold Starscream to that. Optimus would have wanted it, even if Ratchet would have hated it. Memorials are for the living, not the dead, so his opinions don’t really matter anymore. 

Sometimes, when he stands surrounded by so many other bots, he finds himself amazed at how much has changed. There was a time when this many bots watched him in the Pits, but only to see him fight, only to see him kill. Another time, this many bots followed him into War and helped him overthrow the Functionalists, before it all spiraled out of control. Cycles ago, he returned to Cybertron and let them sit in judgement over him. Now, the leader of the Senate shakes his hand and praises his and Ratchet’s efforts, and very few bother to remind anyone that Starscream was once Megatron’s underling. 

There are those who still hate Megatron of course, but he doesn’t deny the truth. He once lead a world into war, and while he can’t bring those bots back to life and he can’t erase his own history, he refuses to feel ashamed of why he did it. Instead, he demands that no other bots ever stand idly by and let someone like the Functionalists come to power. It doesn’t erase every criticism of him, but it does help temper some of the louder voices. 

But more and more, he finds himself as a mentor. He is not the leader of these bots - Ratchet made sure of that - but he is a voice of strength, a voice of reason, a voice of compassion. It’s the oddest turn of events - from warlord to ombudsman. Megatron isn’t certain what to make of it all, but he prefers this to an eternal war. 

Ratchet’s life ended with no regrets, except for one. As Megatron addresses the bots, speaking of his courage and his bravery, he turns to address each level, eyes seeking a familiar spark. Maybe, the reborn Orion will appear here today, drawn to Ratchet without knowing why. It would only be fair and right if he were. 

Each level he looks at, even those too far away to clearly see. There are familiar faces here and there - Autobots come to pay their respect, ex-Decepticons looking on, regular bots who attend the Pits all the time, some to speak and others just to watch. But nowhere does he see a glimmer of Orion or Optimus. It would only be right for him to return now, but he hasn’t. His spark is still elsewhere. It may not even be on Cybertron, but somewhere on some distant colony. Maybe Megatron passed him on his travels through the universe, narrowly missing him while he ran away from Cybertron. Maybe he still waits out there for Megatron to return. 

He tries to dismiss that thought from his mind, focusing only on Ratchet. 

When the funeral’s done and he’s yielded the floor to other Autobots to speak, he finds Knock Out waiting for him in the under-pit. “Nice speech. He would have hated it.” 

“He hated most everything. It was refreshing,” Megatron eyes up the medical bot, suspecting his isn’t just Knock Out coming to pay his respects, “I just had a check-up. You aren’t due until the end of the cycle.” 

“I wasn’t, but things have changed. You’re getting older, and someone needs to keep a closer eye on you.” Knock Out’s already unpacking his tools. It’s a shame that Megatron isn’t able to order him around anymore, or he’d throw him out. But with Ratchet’s passing, he probably has a point. Megatron should have check-ups more often, especially now that he’s starting to notice that he’s not as fast as he once was. He could still destroy most anyone in a one on one battle, but sometimes he finds it takes a few milliseconds to respond when once it took no time at all. 

As Knock Out busies himself testing Megatron’s vitals, he talks to Megatron like they’re old friends (and Megatron begrudgingly supposes that they are old friends at this point). “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve opened a new practice. It’s very upscale, dealing with only the richest bots on Cybertron. You wouldn’t believe how often some very rich people need a doctor to pay house calls.” 

“I have a very good idea of how often they do. Some of the Functionalists used to host private fights.” Megatron had done them once and only once. The fighting had been ordinary enough. But there were other bets, other requests, and the fighting verged on torture. The money had not been enough for him. He stuck to the Pit from then on after, where the gladiators had their own rules that were fair. 

Knock Out seems to take the hint, directing conversation away from that. “Well, your spark’s still tainted, but it’s going strong as ever. For all that Unicorn’s blood did to you, it hasn’t harmed how healthy you are. You might just outlive us all. How are your reaction times?” 

“Nearly the same. This arm isn’t as quick.” He lifts his cannon arm and lets Knock Out study it. Megatron thinks again on Knock Out’s practices and supposes he might say something about it. “It’s good you’re doing well. Just don’t let them turn you into part of their world. The money isn’t worth it.” 

“No worries there. It’s only good having money if you’re still able to spend it when it’s all said and done.” Knock Out opens up a panel in the side of Megatron’s arm, tweaking something. “Try that out.” 

He does. The reaction time is back to normal and he gives a solid nod. “Hm. Good work.” 

“It always is. Remember to keep taking nanobot baths to keep your system clean. And congrats.” Knock Out adds as he packs his things up. 

“For what?” Megatron lowers his arm, looking to the medbot for an explanation. He had better not mean that about Ratchet’s funeral. The man was an ass, but he deserved respect. 

But Knock Out seems surprised. “You haven’t heard yet? You might want to check your messages before you go back out.” 

Once Knock Out leaves, Megatron does that, using his datapad. It’s front page news, impossible to miss. 

MEGATRON TO BE NAMED AS NEXT PRIME, it declares. The story goes on to explain the legacy of the Primes and the resurrection of this honor to be given to elder statesman who help the community, but after that, his eyes gloss down the page, fixing on the picture of Orion and Megatron included in the article. He doesn’t remember it, one of many pre-War photos of them together, before the split between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

He laughs then, until his voice box is crackling, until he has to sit down, the datapad hanging from his hand. 

\--

Knock Out is right - he outlives them all. Well, not all of them. The Cybertronian Civil War (as it becomes known once other important wars begin to happen) is not erased, but it does fade from memory as the veterans begin to die. He tries to keep track of the names and he tries to go to the funerals, but in time, he only attends those he knew well. The younger bots still live, though they’ve aged quicker than Megatron. 

He meets up with Arcee again, amused to find that at least she is still spry in her old age. Some of the other Autobots haven’t been so lucky. Bulkhead’s passed on, along with that bore Ultra Magnus. And the last time he saw Smokescreen, that once smug Autobot was moving at half his usual speed. Of course, Megatron wasn’t moving as quickly these days either, even with the nanobaths and the best medics that Knock Out’s hospitals could supply. Arcee, on the other hand, looks well. She has a new paintjob that’s kept her fresh and young looking, though her voice box sounds somewhat husky. 

“I can’t believe you’re a Prime now,” she says and he just laughs. He’s had the name for cycles now, but he still can’t think of himself as Megatron Prime. It was once a title he lusted for, back when the Matrix of Leadership was still a rumor. Now, he finds himself mildly embarrassed by it 

“It’s not real. They’ve never known a real Prime and they never will.” Megatron points out. They’re watching a debate in the pit between two young Bots. He’s leery of the one with the green and orange paint job, whose arguments are too close to functionalism for his tastes. They’re already forgetting the rebellion that caused the War. The old ones have passed away and there’s only Megatron and a few others to remind them of the way it was. 

“I wouldn’t bet on it. The Matrix of Leadership found its way back once before. It’s out there. It’s just waiting for the right bot.” Arcee says and she nudges Megatron with her elbow. “Which isn’t you.” 

He shakes his head somewhat. Once, he would have been insulted. Now he knows it’s true. He’s a great leader, one of the greatest ever, but the Matrix wasn’t meant for him. Megatron no long lusts for it as he once did. An idle thought passes through his mind. “What ever happened to your human?” 

“He died a long time ago. They don’t live very long. But he made it past their usual life expectancy. 150 years.” She speaks fondly of such a short period of time. Even now, her optics seem a little brighter, just thinking about the boy. “You know, they don’t have purely organic bodies anymore. They’ve meshed themselves up with machines. Organic-mechanical beings, called cyborgs.” 

Megatron makes a displeased sound, remembering the abomination brought on board the ship on Earth, the thing made with Breakdown’s body and that repulsive human graphed inside of him, where his spark should have been. 

As he’s about to say something, the orange-and-green bot below moves beyond hinting at functionalism and shouts out to the pit that bots should do what they were meant to do. He stands quickly and heads for the stairs down. The stairs are crowded but people quickly part, leaving room for Megatron. No one stops him as he strides out onto the floor of the Pit. The functionalist’s opponent seems relieved to see Megatron, quickly stepping out of the way after handing Megatron his mic. 

Once, he wouldn’t have needed to strain to be heard. These days though, he uses the mic when he speaks, letting the speakers carry his voice so he doesn’t strain his voicebox too badly. “Once, the senate felt the same as you. They called themselves the Functionalists, they believed each bot was made to serve a single function. Your alt mode decided what work you would have. It decided where you lived. It decided what your pay was.” 

“And people were happier-” The bot says but Megatron cuts him off. 

“Some people were happier. Those whose modes marked them as special were pleased with the system. But what of those who weren’t special? What of those whose alt-modes were deemed useless or couldn’t be easily discovered? Or what of those whose passions were separate from their alt-modes?” He lifts his voice to the crowd, his hand gesturing to those listening in. “What of the flyers who wanted to be politicians? What of the miners who dreamed of being poets? Do you know what happened to them? Do you?” 

His hand comes to point at the bot across from him. The bot blusters then, pushing forward. “Plenty of people want to do things they’re not good at. That doesn’t mean they should be allowed to do them. If everyone did as they wanted, nobody would ever do the unpleasant jobs, like hauling off garbage.” 

“Why aren’t you doing that?” Someone shouts down from above and Megatron raises a hand to halt them from disrupting all of this. 

“In those days, anyone who refused to do as they were told was empurataed. Their heads and hands would be taken from them, replaced with faceless, fingerless models. Their minds would be altered to remove their desires, their emotions, their memories.” Megatron listens as the hush goes over the crowd. Most were reversed when the Autobots came into power, but now and then, there are still those who carry their empurata mutilations. Shockwave did to the bitter end, refusing to have his face returned to him, serving forever as a reminder of what he had once suffered. 

“Many of the empurataed came to fight in the Pit. Many who couldn’t earn enough to stay alive came to fight in the Pit, like I did. I was a mining model. I was kept underground for cycles. They used to take my reading materials from me and destroy them. Do you know what they did with bots who could no longer do their functions?” He pushes hard, seeing the fear come into the Neo-Functionalist’s eyes. Megatron could back down, but he can’t, not now. This is the most he’s spoken about himself in cycles, but he can’t stop now. They need to hear. They need to understand. “They would melt you down into slag. Sometimes, if you weren’t dying fast enough for their tastes, they would find a reason to kill you.”

“When you reduce a bot to their function, you turn them into a tool. You become a hammer, a screwdriver, a corkscrew - something without dreams or thoughts or hopes. Something that is not allowed to be anything other than a tool. You reduce them and when this bot decided it would rather paint than be a hammer, or this bot decided it would rather bartend than be a screwdriver, you act as if the tool has personally wronged you by not being what you wanted them to be.” Megatron can feel the fire stirring within his spark and he’s glad to know that even after all this time, he can still captivate an audience. He can still speak the truth and have them listen to him. “You ignore that you are dealing with a bot with a mind - not a thing you can shut in a drawer when you’re done using it. A person defines who they wish to be. There will never be an absence of garbage haulers, because there will always be someone who is willing to work for pay. But in a Functionalist’s society, there will always be an absence of great works and fine arts, because you will have condemned more than half of your thinkers and dreamers to short, ugly lives, or to no life at all.” 

He waits for the retort but there is none. The orange and green bot just bows instead, gesturing to Megatron that he yields. He is not impressed by the bot, but he nods all the same, politely letting him withdraw. Megatron feels good, knowing that he’s been heard here today and knowing this should stop any further Functionalist lines of thought, for a little while anyway. 

If ever they return in full force, they had better hope he’s gone, or he’ll start a second war over it. 

Megatron steps out of the Pit floor, heading back up to join Arcee when a young bot stops him on the stairs. “Excuse me, Prime. I was hoping to ask you a favour.” 

His eyes are so blue. They’re bluer than the Earth’s sky, bluer than the seas he saw off of Forn-Alter 7. Megatron feels as if all his motors have stopped and gone still as he looks at this bot in front of him. 

“My name is Sah and I was hoping I could speak with you privately some time. There’s a lot of information about you in the historical database, but there aren’t any from you.” He says and he even sounds like Orion did when he was young, that thoughtful, sure voice of his.

“You’re an Archivist,” he says, the word rumbling comfortably in his mouth. How long has it been? How many cycles since he said it? How many thousands of cycles since this spark stood in front of him. 

Orion- Sah- he blinks in surprise and then smiles at Megatron, his head tilting the way Orion’s used to. “Yes, I am. I was hoping I could record you speaking about your life story, especially your role in starting the Anti-Functionalist Rebellion and the Cybertronian Civil War. I’m collecting oral histories for the historical database and if you don’t mind, I’d like to record yours.” 

His eyes are so _blue._

Megatron reaches out, setting his hands on Sah’s shoulders, feeling them beneath his old hands. He can feel his eyes fogging over, the world turning faint. It takes everything he can to keep himself from wrapping both arms around this bot and pressing him close. Optimus’ spark shines so brightly through Sah’s chest and he wants nothing more than to touch it and feel it pulse against his fingertips. 

“I have been waiting a very long time for you,” he tells Sah, tells Orion, tells Optimus, “we have so much to speak about. I knew your spark once, a long time ago, before it was reborn.” 

This bot looks at him and though he’s confused, he doesn’t pull away. “You can recognize a spark when it’s been reborn?” 

“I would know you even if I had forgotten everything else, even myself,” he promises, and then he does draw Orion in close, holding him just like he dreamed of for so many years. They must all think he’s got mad, but Megatron no longer cares. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. “Welcome home, Orion Pax.”

Welcome home.


End file.
